Polish Students Design Best Mars Rover of 2013

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Hanksville, UTAH — In the rugged desert landscape of
southern Utah, 7.5 miles from the nearest town, 10 student teams
competed in the Mars Society's annual University Rover Challenge
(URC). Six seasoned engineering students from Bialystok
University of Technology in Poland took first place with the
"Hyperion" craft — their prototype for what a future Mars rover
might look like.

"Out of 500 possible points, they scored 493 — the
highest-ever score at URC!" said Kevin Sloan, director of the
challenge. Another Polish team, Scorpio 3 from the Wroclaw
University of Technology, took second place, with 401 points.
Brigham Young University placed third, with 350 points.

Now in its seventh year, the competition draws students from
around the world. Teams came from Canada, India, the United
States and Poland with their rovers
designed to serve future human inhabitants of the Red
Planet. The Mars Society is an international organization
dedicated to promoting human settlement on Mars. It runs four
Mars simulation sites, including the Mars Desert Research Station
(MDRS) in the Canyonlands of Utah. [See video
of Mars Rover Challenge ]

The Hyperion team attributed its success to having a small group
that had worked closely together over the past three years. "Less
people, less trouble," team captain Piotr Ciura, who was also a
member of the 2011 winning URC team, said in his team's
presentation to the judges. The six men built their rover in only
two months and arrived several days early to test it on-site.
[See also: The
Rocky Road to Building the Next Mars Rover ]

For most teams, the toughest challenge was simply getting their
rovers to move. "Driving over bumpy dirt roads just to get out to
the MDRS can damage parts. One loose wire can mean the entire
system fails," said Chuck McMurray, the Mars Society's deputy
education director.

After the first day of the three-day competition, most teams had
repairs to make. Many stayed up all night working along the
narrow walkways in front of their motel-room doors. The defending
champions from York University in Toronto had brought their
MakerBot 3D printer. It hummed along in a corner of the bathroom
for hours making replacement parts for the rover's robotic arm.

Many teams used 3D-printed parts, and judge Anne Anderson, a
biologist from Utah State University, said that 3D
printing will become as important an invention to the
world as the transistor.

Each rover had four timed tasks to tackle in the desert and
around the Mars Desert Research Site: servicing equipment,
assisting astronauts, collecting samples and navigating a
rough-terrain obstacle course.

"On Mars, it will be a lot easier to send a robot out to fix
equipment or deliver supplies than sending out another
astronaut," Sloan said. And because rovers
on Mars would likely be controlled by those back at a
base station, the same restriction was placed on the teams who
set up their command centers in trailers out of view of the
competition field.

The rovers looked similar — knee-high vehicles with articulated
robotic arms, specialized suspension systems for navigating rocky
terrain, cameras to provide a video feed, and a
telecommunications system to communicate with the command center.
Each team added its own selection of scientific instruments and
other accessories to accomplish the tasks.

Equipment servicing

The equipment-servicing task demanded the most precision. After a
25-minute setup period, teams sent their rovers out to a PVC box
designed to represent a solar
panel . McMurray used a flour sifter to cover the panel with
dirt.

After flipping a series of light switches — a no-brainer for a
human, but difficult for a robot — the rovers were repositioned
to use their arms with an attached device to clean the panel.
Oregon State's rover used pieces of a Swiffer duster and a pair
of ice scrapers for the job, while Hyperion blew the dirt away
with a high-powered fan. Scorpio 3 used a rotating brush that
worked well until it fell off — the direction of the spin also
unscrewed the brush.

Astronaut assist

For this challenge, four scarecrows dressed as astronauts were
placed out in the desert, beyond sandy ridges and ravines that
blocked them from view. The rovers had to deliver four numbered
packages to the corresponding astronauts
.

Akers, the rover from the Missouri University of Science and
Technology, got stuck on a soft sandy hill — its wheels
spinning in a circle as the chassis sunk in the sand. Team
members rescued the rover, carrying it back like pallbearers at a
funeral.

Sample collection

Life-sciences students had important roles to play in the
sample-collection task. Rovers had to obtain a sample from at
least two inches below the ground, perform onboard testing for
signs of life and then bring back the sample to the command
center for further testing.

Each team had a different solution for this task. For instance,
the team from Brigham Young University used a laser on the belly
of the rover that revealed degrees of conductivity in the soil.
The data was used to pinpoint the spots where microbes were
likely to be present. The light was strong enough to blind
onlookers if they got too close, a team member said.

The team from SRM University in Chennai, India, made a
helix-shaped, hollow drill that could extract a sample as it spun
in one direction and emptied the dirt when it rotated in reverse.
A blue light on the rover was used to detect microbes. [See
also: Mars
Once Had All the Right Conditions to Support Life ]

But as in other tasks, mechanical snags foiled a number of teams.
Missouri scrambled to fix its nonresponsive scoop attachment.
Despite last-minute reprogramming, snipping wires and reattaching
pieces with alligator clips, their rover failed to do much more
than make it a few yards off the starting point.

Terrain

The terrain task tested the mechanical design of the rovers. In
this task, suspension systems and wheels could make or break a
rover as it attempted to pass through five pairs of PVC-pipe
gates placed along the rock-strewn course that included sharp
drops and steep elevations.

Hyperion stunned the judges with a flawless high-speed run
through the terrain course. Given an hour, the Hyperion rover
completed the course in less than 12 minutes. No other team was
even able to maneuver its rover through all five gates.

A mistake that worked

Oregon State's wheels were the talk of the competition. Instead
of using inflatable tires, the team incorporated a simple open
metal frame, which gave the rover a significant weight savings
and allowed it to perform pretty well on all but the steepest
slopes.

"The tires were actually a mistake," team leader John Zeller
said. "The tires we ordered didn't fit, so we tried just using
the frames — and it worked."

Anderson commended Oregon on being open-minded.

"I tell my students to watch their work like hawks," she said.
"If something doesn't go the way they intended, they should step
back and ask themselves if perhaps it's better. Mistakes can be
gifts."